Tips for Lean Managers Archives | Page 7 of 9

The Kaizen Mindset Requires Starting with Scarcity

By Jon Miller - March 16th, 2007

We have been fortunate to visit Ricoh factories in Japan and in my opinion Ricoh is an excellent company and a great example of implementing the Toyota Production System outside of the automotive industry. They are also a leader in red

Build a Workplace You Can Be Proud Of

By Jon Miller - March 6th, 2007

People talk about pride. It’s a funny thing. I’ve never seen a “pride” poster in a factory or workplace that had their 5S down, good visual management in place and smiling employees. Maybe they 5S-ed the pride p

Give Me 60 Minutes and I’ll Give You a Lean Transformation

By Jon Miller - March 5th, 2007

That’s 60 minutes from everyone in supervisory position and above, at least once every three weeks, forever. If that’s too much to ask, save yourself two minutes and stop reading now. There’s something called “s

How Do You Sustain Improvement?

By Jon Miller - March 3rd, 2007

“How do you sustain improvement?” This is one of the most common questions posed to us about kaizen and Lean. I used to think this question required a thoughtful pause and a serious three-part reply. But lately I ask “

Genchi Gembutsu at the Starbucks Coffee Company

By Jon Miller - February 24th, 2007

Toyota is not the only global brand having growing pains from its success these days. In today’s Wall Street Journal article titled Starbucks Chairman Says Trouble May Be Brewing, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has sent out a

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 3

By Jon Miller - February 1st, 2007

How do you motivate the people on the trailing edge of the bell curve? The so-called “anchor draggers” or CAVE people tend to attract the most attention or concern during the process of change. I wish we had time to bring e

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 2

By Jon Miller - January 31st, 2007

How to motivate people to change? A day later and I still don’t know, but Taiichi Ohno’s “game of wits” comes to mind (see chapter 25 of Workplace Management). A game is something that is fun. Most of us are mot

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 1

By Jon Miller - January 30th, 2007

How to motivate people to change? That question was asked recently. It’s a good question and one that we should not assume we know the answer to. It is not a question that should be addressed in your organizations by professional

Being an Improvement Agnostic

By Jon Miller - December 27th, 2006

A while ago my colleague and I were doing our best imitations of slick salesmen in front of a group of leaders from a small, local manufacturing firm. We were fired up after a tour of their factory, confident that space could be cut to

How to Put Kaizen into Your Culture

By Jon Miller - December 5th, 2006

These are the two steps for how to put kaizen into your culture. First, communicate with your people until you have a common agreement and 100% alignment on these principles: The reason we can make our living is because we serve our cu

Hansei on Hansei

By Jon Miller - November 30th, 2006

As Taiichi Ohno said “Check is hansei” when referring to the third step of PDCA. I am doing hansei on the previous blog post on the topic of hansei. I did not think deeply enough about what “hansei” means and wh

Dilbert Rips Six Sigma

By Jon Miller - November 28th, 2006

Kent Bradley from Gemba handed me a Dilbert cartoon yesterday poking fun at Six Sigma. Here is the script: [Point-Haired Boss standing next to “SIX SIGMA” slide] Our company has decided to try something new. [Dilbert] New?

Thankful but Dissatisfied

By Jon Miller - November 25th, 2006

Reflecting on this Thanksgiving holiday, I have a lot to be thankful for but I am dissatisfied. It has been a challenging year in many ways, both personally and in business. I am thankful that there are so many problems in front of me

What is a Kamishibai?

By Jon Miller - November 21st, 2006

I heard the term kamishibai (紙芝居) used in the context of the Toyota Production System for the first time in 2006. It was at an LEI seminar hosted by a former Toyota manager. At the time I thought it was a gratuitous use of a Japa

Why Six Sigma is Essential for Kaizen Success

By Jon Miller - November 18th, 2006

Genchi gembutsu means that in a Lean organization improvement must be done at the closest point to the value-adding workplace (gemba) following the scientific method based on facts. I’ve liked genchi gembutsu and management by fa

The Toyota Preparation System or the “Bank of Preparation”

By Jon Miller - November 9th, 2006

Toyota is great at doing what appear to be common sense things extraordinarily well. They take the time to do preparation, then execute quickly. There is a reference to this in Jeffrey Liker’s The Toyota Way where (I am paraphrasing)

Kaizen vs. Kaikaku

By Jon Miller - November 5th, 2006

While “kaizen” has been a familiar term in English management vocabulary for decades, “kaikaku” is more recent. Though kaizen has been widely embraced by Japanese companies for years, kaikaku was less common. Ho

Reflection (Hansei) is the Noblest Teacher

By Jon Miller - October 30th, 2006

Hansei is a Japanese word meaning “reflection” as in reflecting on ideas or experiences in order to learn from successes or failures to improve oneself in the future. It is a key step in kaizen, both personal improvement an

Don’t Talk to Us About Toyota

By Jon Miller - October 28th, 2006

“Don’t talk to us about Toyota” demanded a new customer recently. Their reasoning was that Toyota’s level was unachievable for them. This client does not build cars. But they were asking for world class benchmar

The View from the Other Side: Stop the Kaizen!

By Jon Miller - October 13th, 2006

The Job Schmob blogger gives us (kaizen people) a view from the other side in his (her?) October 2, 2006 post The Business of Change Management and Corporate Propaganda: Part 1. The Job Schmob blog person takes issue with a quote by ma

Operational Excellence Requires Kaizen and Respect for People

By Jon Miller - October 9th, 2006

Kaizen is easy. Respect for people is hard. I don’t know why. I just don’t see a lot of companies talking about and doing the latter. Talking about only, perhaps. What does respect for people really mean, anyway? At Toyota

Copy + Kaizen = Yokoten

By Jon Miller - October 5th, 2006

Here’s my understanding of one of the winning behaviors of Toyota, namely copying and improving on kaizen ideas that work. We’ll call this yokoten since it’s more precise than “copy” or “horizontal d

My Early Kaizen Days

By Jon Miller - September 27th, 2006

Thirteen years ago this month I nervously stepped into the lobby of the Sheraton at Hartford, Connecticut airport. It was the first day of my first Shingijutsu kaizen event. I did not know what to expect. I remember the first words out

One Sign of a Lean Culture: Kaizen or Get Out

By Jon Miller - September 22nd, 2006

I had lunch yesterday with a local client of ours. He owns a small factory that employs about 30 people. The products they make are fairly simple and the processes are not complex. They have made some big changes in the factory layout

What Experience Do You Have in My Industry?

By Jon Miller - September 12th, 2006

“What experience do you have in my industry?” I heard this again today for the nth time, with n being a number sufficiently large such that n x $1 would buy a nice lunch for everyone who reads this today. The “industr

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